SOURCES OF CONTEMPT
‘Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven.’
What, in the estimate of Jesus Christ, are the sources of contempt?
I. Want of knowledge.—Want of knowledge will produce contempt. If only, He seems to say, you have a due apprehension of the universe in which you are living, if only you know its vastness and marvellous organisation, then you could not be filled with this spirit of contempt. You could not despise the smallest and meanest in God’s great universe if only you had a true and enlarged conception of what that universe is.
II. Want of wisdom.—A wise man never despises. See one moment. Unwise men are ready to despise because they do not understand, or think out the meaning of little things. But the man of wisdom sees there is nothing in the world, however mean, that cannot have a real significance, and that just as you can see that the universe is one so you may see in a single thing the whole universe reflected. Here is the man who will not despise.
III. Want of reverence.—The spirit of contempt is what Jesus Christ contends with. If you will take the whole drift of His thought, you will see what He warns men against is that spirit of irreverent want of sympathy. There is nothing which so completely destroys the character and disturbs the life, rendering it useless and unpractical, as this spirit of contempt. Mark the types of Christianity it forms, and see how it then is totally at variance with that great spirit of Christianity which ought to be full of reverence because filled with love.
IV. The remedy.—Sympathy is the antidote to contempt, as love is the grand restorative of all the ills of the universe. The power of love comes upon the soul of man, and shows us that even in the basest and meanest of men there are splendid possibilities; that you can take all these fallen beings, and by surrounding them by sympathy lift them into self-esteem, and can restore them to the power of gratitude. Yes, we must despise no one in whom perchance God’s angel is struggling to raise them. We are sent as ministering angels to make them better and clearer in their views of the Father which is in heaven.
Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter.